Chameleon People

by Hans Olav Lahlum

  Miriam was suddenly very still. She looked out of the window and her hand trembled faintly in mine.

  ‘Surely it can’t? People in Norway do not kill each other for their political persuasions,’ I said, trying to reassure her.

  Miriam carried on looking out of the window when she finally answered. ‘Three months ago, I would have said no and laughed. But now I am not so sure. There are a lot of powerful and frightening emotions out there in the dark at the moment. I have been called the most incredible things by men in suits, and the day before yesterday an old woman spat at me when I was manning the stand. Parents and children have stopped speaking to each other and a lot of people are worried about their partners and their jobs. I don’t think anyone would kill in connection with an election in Norway, but I’m not so sure any more that some fanatic or other might not kill in connection with the referendum.’

  We sat in silence and pondered this over our cups of coffee. I had assumed that the young murderer might be disturbed, but I hadn’t even considered that the killing could have been politically motivated.

  I said that it was food for thought. Then I went out into the hall and got the photographs of the suspect which I put down on the table in front of us.

  Miriam leaned forwards and stared at them intensely, but then shook her head. ‘He must be a very lonely boy, if no one has reported him missing. It all seems like a terrible tragedy. He’s not active in any of the political parties’ youth wings in Oslo, otherwise I would have known him. If his limp and speech impediment are so striking, I’m sure I would have known about him if he was active in any of the neighbouring constituencies.’ She fell silent, sat there and stared at the photographs. ‘I have never seen his face before. And yet, when I look at his pictures, I get the strange feeling that I’ve seen him in passing somewhere.’

  I put my arm round her, kissed her on the cheek and asked her to think hard. She sat in deep concentration for about a minute before she said anything else.

  ‘I might be wrong, but do you remember the cyclist we saw a couple of times outside here at a distance last autumn?’

  I had to think for a while myself before answering. It was not something I had given much thought to. But now that she mentioned it, it gradually came back to me that we had noticed a cyclist outside here a couple of times. He had just been standing with his bike further down the road. Close enough for us to see him and his bike, but too far away for us to see any details.

  The first time we saw him, he cycled off after about thirty seconds. The second time, he stood there for longer, and Miriam had wondered as we went in whether we should ask if he needed help. Maybe he was lost or was having problems with his bike, she said. I turned back somewhat reluctantly, and walked towards the cyclist with her, but when we were only a matter of yards away, he hopped on his bike and disappeared down the hill.

  ‘It could certainly have been him. But that only makes things more bizarre, slightly crazy, in fact, if he was watching the flat already last autumn, only then to cycle all the way up here after he had murdered someone in Majorstuen.’

  Miriam nodded. ‘It’s all very odd, no matter what. The strangest thing really is that he so purposefully sought you out after the murder.’

  I took a couple of deep breaths, then I said: ‘Do you think I should ring the Genius of Frogner?’

  ‘The Genius of Frogner’ was Miriam’s nickname for Patricia. Not only had Miriam been the first to suggest that I should call Patricia in connection with my last murder investigation, she had actually phoned Patricia and persuaded her to help me. But now, when I suggested it myself, she seemed far less keen on the idea.

  ‘You can, of course, do as you wish and whatever you think will be best for the investigation. But I don’t think you should call her, not yet anyway. At the moment it seems most likely that there won’t be a major murder investigation, as the solution lies in the sad life of a disturbed young man. And in any case—’ She stopped mid-sentence and did not continue until I asked her to.

  ‘And in any case, she is a genius, of course, but you are much smarter than you appear to be when all you do is follow her instructions. You would have solved your last murder cases without her, it would just have taken a bit more time and you might have needed a bit more help from me. So I don’t think you should call her just yet, I think you should talk to me a bit more first.’

  Miriam smiled her lopsided, mischievous smile as she said this. I smiled back, kissed her and said that I would definitely rather talk to her than Patricia in her luxury palace in Frogner.

  ‘Have you by any chance ever heard the name Marinus here in Norway? I don’t think he is actually called that, but there must be a reason for him telling me that he was.’

  Miriam straightened up and shook her head. ‘No. It’s an ancient Roman name that I’ve never heard used here. In fact, the only Marinus I have heard of since the Middle Ages, is the man who was beheaded after the Reichstag fire in Germany. I can’t remember his surname – Lubbe, or something like that? That was also a very strange story and a sad fate, if I remember rightly. It must have been sometime in 1933, or 1934 at the latest.’

  Miriam and bookshelves are a story unto themselves. The first time she came to my flat, she went straight to my bookshelves and stood there for about ten minutes. Now, she was sitting beside me one minute, behaving like a perfectly normal fiancée, the next she was over by the bookshelves at the other end of the room, holding one of her favourite books: a five hundred-page history of the twentieth century in Europe. She flicked through it as fast as she could, then suddenly her face lit up with an almost childishly smug smile.

  ‘He was called Marinus van der Lubbe – and it was December 1933! A rather disturbed, and almost blind, young man who was made into a scapegoat, even though it would seem that there were far stronger and more wilful parties behind it.’

  I jumped up and went over to the bookshelves. Miriam held the book out and looked at me with a triumphant smile. I congratulated her on her excellent memory and immediately took the book.

  There was a photograph of Marinus van der Lubbe standing between two prison guards with the Nazi emblem sewn on their uniforms. In purely physical terms, he bore no resemblance to our arrestee in Oslo in 1972. The 1933 Marinus van der Lubbe was a tall, broad-shouldered man in his early twenties, with short curly hair and surprisingly intense eyes. According to the text under the photograph, he had fallen asleep during the trial and had shown many signs of mental distress. However, the similarities in his case and the current situation were striking and thought-provoking.

  ‘Not everyone who read about Marinus van der Lubbe would be able to see the parallels, to be fair,’ I said slowly. I handed the book back to her, without thinking that it was, in fact, mine.

  Miriam smiled, closed the book and put it back in its place, once again with a slightly triumphant air. ‘You can certainly say that. And based on that we can ascertain that the suspect is an unusually well-read boy. But that, of course, does not mean that he is not in some way mentally disturbed. My books on the history of literature are full of examples of people who are well read and totally mad!’ She let out one of her slightly morbid little laughs as she said this, but was soon serious again. ‘Well, we have certainly made a step forwards and you now have a couple of new questions to ask of your mysterious arrestee. Perhaps you should drive down to the station now and see if you can get some answers.’

  She looked at me questioningly. I glanced at my watch. As always, the hours had slipped by in Miriam’s inspiring company. It was already a quarter past ten. I had certainly not planned to go out again this evening and did not want to now, either. So I shared my thoughts on the matter. In other words, that I could just as well ask him the questions first thing tomorrow morning rather than late on Sunday night, and that I had some slightly different plans for the rest of the evening.

  ‘Good,’ Miriam replied. She smiled when she said this. And I smiled back.

  XII />
  Miriam was better than me when it came to falling asleep. Particularly when she had lectures the following morning. She said goodnight at half past eleven and was fast asleep three minutes later.

  I lay there and looked at her peaceful face. I would never say it to Miriam, as I wanted her image of me as a hero to remain, as far as possible, intact, but on evenings like this I felt I was not only an incredibly lucky man, but also an undeservingly lucky one. With Patricia’s help, I had gained a reputation and position in the police force that I could never have imagined was possible only five years ago. And thanks to having met Miriam, my private life was better than ever before.

  Despite the unsolved case, my life as I knew it still felt good and secure. I found myself hoping that the remaining questions would be answered tomorrow and that we could confirm that the arrestee was indeed guilty, whether he was mentally disturbed or not. However, I still had a sneaking feeling that things would not be that simple. The story from 1932 was so striking that it seemed highly unlikely that it was sheer coincidence that one of the others in the group had now been killed forty years later.

  I lay there thinking about it for nearly a quarter of an hour. And then I pondered for a further ten minutes about the boy on the red bicycle and why on earth he had come to my flat. Almost against my will, I found myself wondering what Patricia would have to say about the whole thing.

  And so eventually I fell asleep just before midnight on Sunday, 19 March 1972, with my eyes on Miriam and my mind on Patricia.

  DAY THREE

  Another Death and an Old Eyewitness

  I

  I heard the alarm clock ring, but felt incredibly tired. I was relieved to discover that for some reason it was only ten past six – and so I went back to sleep.

  I then slept very heavily until the alarm clock rang for a second time at ten to seven. At which point I woke with a start and sat bolt upright when I realized that I was alone in bed.

  Fortunately, I remembered within seconds that Miriam had said that she had to go into the People Against the EEC office to sort out some post before her morning lecture.

  I was still tired at ten to seven, so once again I was impressed by my fiancée’s irrepressible energy and efficiency. On my way to the bathroom, I mused on the possibility of a no vote in the autumn referendum, despite the hard sell by Labour and the Conservatives.

  The flat felt very quiet and almost gloomy without Miriam’s bright voice, so I turned on the radio as I sat down to breakfast. The latest developments in the EEC debate were the second item in the morning news on Monday, 20 March 1972. The first was a minor sensation, and that was that Norway and the Soviet Union were close to reaching an agreement on rights in connection with any findings of oil and gas in the Barents Sea. Negotiations had progressed unexpectedly and it was hoped that a draft agreement would be ready for endorsement by next Monday. The acting leader of the Storting’s Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs considered this to be excellent news which could be of great importance to the future of the country. He expressed his hope that the draft agreement would be passed by the Storting as early as the end of the week.

  For a few minutes, I forgot the murder investigation and listened to the news with keen interest. It was no more than a few years since one of the foreign engineers involved in exploratory drilling in the North Sea had stated that he could personally drink all the oil to be found there. But now oil was being extracted with such success that there was talk of establishing a government-owned oil company in Norway. In my discussions with my father last year, I had always maintained that the oil industry could be a possible solution to the increasingly obvious problems in traditional industry. He did not agree. Whereas I believed that the oil industry could provide an income of up to several hundred million a year, he believed that it would never be more than tens of millions at the most.

  It was only once the report was finished that it struck me that Per Johan Fredriksen had been chairman of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs. If he had not been stabbed to death the day before yesterday, it would have been his voice that I heard on the radio just now.

  The newspapers carried a couple of obituaries and matter-of-fact reports on the death of Per Johan Fredriksen, in between the headlines about the EEC and negotiations with the Soviet Union. They reported that he had been murdered and where he had been murdered, and that a suspect had been arrested fleeing the scene of the crime. Aftenposten had picked up on the fact that he was on a bicycle and that the suspect was young, but they had no further details.

  The sparse newspaper coverage suited me very well. But I was fully aware that pressure was mounting. If we did not manage to identify the young suspect in the course of the day, we would have to consider publishing a request for information along with his photograph in tomorrow’s papers. This would not give a good impression and would no doubt lead to speculation and criticism of the police. Following my previous successes, the media and police force had precariously high expectations of me. And I was not at all certain that I could meet them in this investigation – certainly not without Patricia.

  II

  I was back at the station by eight o’clock. I met DI Danielsen in the doorway, as, of course, he had come a few minutes earlier in the hope that he would be there before me. His early rise had been to no avail. There were still no enquiries about anyone who could be the suspect. In fact, there had been no enquiries at all about the case, other than a growing number of calls from the press.

  At a quarter past eight, I once again sat down opposite the arrestee. I did not expect to make any real progress and was not disappointed.

  With a degree of irritation, I repeated my questions as to what he was called and who his parents were. He looked at me with raised eyebrows, but sat in silence.

  I then confronted him with the fact that he had been spying on me outside my flat the previous autumn.

  This did not appear to surprise him. He hesitated for a moment, then gave a quick but definite nod. A small smile slipped over his lips, but disappeared just as quickly. Once more, he sat there and did not say a word, his face almost devoid of expression when I asked why he had spied on me.

  I played my final card and said: ‘When you told me yesterday that your name was Marinus, you were referring to Marinus van der Lubbe, weren’t you? You were trying to tell me that you are being made a scapegoat, just as he was, for a greater crime involving more powerful parties?’

  I leaned forwards and tried to catch his eye. There was a sudden brief spark. He nodded – quickly and almost vigorously. Then he sank back into apathy without saying anything.

  ‘Van der Lubbe was at the scene of the crime, but claimed he had not seen who set fire to the Reichstag building. Did you see Per Johan Fredriksen being murdered on Saturday?’

  He did not look at me, but shook his head almost imperceptibly in response.

  I interpreted this to mean that he had not seen the murder, or who did it. But it could as easily mean that for some reason or other, he did not want to tell me what he had seen. Whatever the case, it felt more and more pointless to sit here questioning him.

  He remained silent when I stood up and walked towards the door. But then, just as I put my hand on the door handle, he unexpectedly piped up: ‘If you don’t find out who the murderer is soon, my fate will be the same as Hauptmann’s.’

  Then nothing more. He didn’t move a muscle when I asked who Hauptmann was, what had happened to Hauptmann and what he meant by all these riddles.

  I left without getting an answer, and more confused than ever.

  III

  ‘Well, there is some progress, at least he is saying something, even if it is still not a lot.’

  I gave a brief nod to my boss’s first statement, and Danielsen gave a quick nod to the second.

  Neither of them knew or remembered anything about any Hauptmann. We had just been informed that the unusually annoying lawyer, Edvard Rønning Junior, had been appointed as the
defence, and that he found it ‘highly unsatisfactory’ that the police could not tell him his client’s name. The atmosphere in my boss’s office was somewhat strained, to say the least.

  ‘This is just a waste of time. The boy is clearly guilty, and the court will just have to decide whether he is too disturbed to go to prison or not. Let’s release his picture in the papers tomorrow if no one gets in touch, and in the meantime, we can get on with more meaningful work,’ Danielsen said, opening his hands in suggestion.

  The boss looked at me questioningly. I answered diplomatically that that might well be true and that we should perhaps not use too many resources on the case. I was not opposed to Danielsen taking on more exciting tasks, but would myself prefer to keep working on this one. Until we knew the identity of the suspect, the motive would remain unclear and could well be significant in terms of whether he was of sound mind or not.

  It was my turn to look questioningly at my boss. He dithered for a moment or two, before nodding gravely.

  ‘Let’s do as you both wish. Danielsen can move on to other jobs and Kristiansen, you can continue to work on possible motives in the hope of solving the question of the suspect’s identity. We will not make anything public yet.’

  It was not a solution that any of us were entirely happy with, but it was one that we could all live with. Danielsen and I left the office together, but did not exchange a word or look.

  I dutifully checked that no new information had come in that might help to identify the suspect. Then I left behind the growing pile of press enquiries to the switchboard and returned to my office. From there I rang Oda Fredriksen and asked if I could come and see her again.

  IV

  The drawing room in Bygdøy felt even larger when there were only two of us there. Oda Fredriksen and I sat alone at a huge mahogany table full of flowers.